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MEA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose primary mission is to work with veterans and their families to publish short stories, essays, poems, and artwork in our bi-annual publication, As You Were: The Military Review, periodic editions of Blue Nostalgia: The Journal of Post-Traumatic Growth and others. Each author or poet that submits work to us is afforded the chance to work one-on-one with a mentor to polish their work or learn new skills and techniques.

Our staff is based all over the country and includes college professors, professional authors, veterans’ advocates, and clinicians. As such, most of our services are provided through email and online writing workshops.

All editing, consultations, and workshops are free of charge. Veterans and their families pay nothing for our services, and they never will.

Under our Publications tab, there are more than a dozen volumes of creative work crafted by veterans and their family members as well as a virtual art gallery. Our blog posts feature short pieces that cover a wide range of opinion editorials, literary reviews, and profiles on veteran artists and writers.

Please consider spending some time navigating our site and reading and seeing the fine work of veterans and their families from around the globe.

Deathstalker

by Matthew Oudbier

In Iraq, the Syrian Desert expands in all directions. An earthen ocean of rock and sand stretches in waves to meet a sky that blankets creation. In Iraq, US Marines expand in all directions, searching for enemy victims. We bleed into the Syrian Desert.

The violent sun looks hard down on me. I wipe the sweat that beads from the space between my helmet and my forehead with my palm, salt and dirt are congealed on my wrists, and my rifle is the weight of dying in my hands.

It is easy to kill the haji when his Kalashnikov is hanging down his back, and he is loading his Toyota Hilux with a dozen or so 155mm HME packed artillery shells. Just look him in the eye. Look through his eye. Into his brain. Into the birth of civilization. When nomads wandered the desert with their families looking for fertile ground. Look down your sights and 4x magnify his heart beating just as fast as your heart beats. Imagine him imagining you, burning. Imagine lying down and going to sleep for 12,000 years. Wake up when the Tigris and Euphrates are dry.

Once I observed a pale yellow scorpion crawling across the hot desert sand. In a land of coarse grit and burning ecru I looked down on my enemy. The scorpion passed untroubled—Leiurus quinquestriatus.

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